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SpaceX’s orbital Starship launch debut may be pushed to 2022 by slow FAA reviews
In a rare sign of material progress, SpaceX and the FAA have finally released what is known as a draft environmental assessment (EA) of the company’s South Texas Starship launch plans.
Set to be the largest and most powerful rocket in spaceflight history when it first begins orbital launches, the process of acquiring permission to launch Starship and its Super Heavy booster out of the wetlands of the South Texas coast was never going to be easy. The Boca Chica site SpaceX ultimately settled on for its first private launch facilities – initially meant for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy but later dedicated to BFR (now Starship) – is simultaneously surrounded by sensitive coastal habitats populated by several threatened or endangered species and situated mere miles as the crow flies from a city whose temporary population oscillates from a few thousand to tens of thousands.
Reception and analysis of the draft and its timing have been mixed. On one hand, SpaceX’s draft EA – completed with oversight from the FAA and help from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) – gives a number of reasons for optimism. In a sign that SpaceX is taking a pragmatic approach to the inevitable environmental review and launch license approval hurdles standing in front of orbital South Texas Starship launches, the company has actually pursued what is known as a “programmatic environmental assessment” (PEA).
Most importantly, that means that SpaceX’s Starbase PEA – if approved – will be more like a foundation or stepping stone that should make it easier to start small and methodically expand the scope and nature of the company’s plans for Boca Chica. Along those lines, as part of Starbase’s first dedicated environmental assessment, SpaceX has proposed a maximum of 23 flight operations annually while Starship is still in the development phase, including up to 20 suborbital Starship test flights and 3 orbital launches (or Super Heavy hops). Once SpaceX has worked out enough kinks for slightly more confident Starship operations, the company would enter an “operational phase” that would allow for as many as five suborbital Starship launches and five orbital Starship launches, as well as ship and booster landings back on land after all 10 possible launches.
In other words, SpaceX’s initial draft PEA is extremely conservative, requesting permission for what amounts to a bare minimum concept of operations for orbital Starship launches. At a maximum of 3-5 orbital launches per year, a PEA and subsequent launch license approved as-is would likely give SpaceX just enough slack to perform basic Earth orbit launches and no more than one or two orbital refilling tests per year. However, as an example, a five-launch maximum would almost entirely prevent SpaceX from launching Starship to Mars, the Moon, and maybe even high-energy Earth orbits without using all of its annual launch allotments on a single mission.
Perhaps most importantly, the draft PEA as proposed would unequivocally prevent SpaceX from performing the NASA Human Lander System (HLS) Moon landings it received an almost $3 billion contract to complete. Each HLS Starship Moon landing is expected to require anywhere from 10-16 launches to deliver a depot ship, HLS lander, and ~1200 tons of propellant to orbit. However, in terms of SpaceX’s prospects of developing Starship as quickly as possible, that’s actually a good thing. Above all else, SpaceX’s slimmed-down draft PEA should be far easier for the FAA to approve than a PEA pursuing permission for Starship’s ultimate ambitions – dozens to hundreds of launches annually – from the beginning. In theory, with this barebones PEA approved, SpaceX would then be able to build off the foundation with additional environmental assessments – like, for example, of expanding Starship’s maximum launch cadence.
Of course, SpaceX first needs the FAA turn this first draft PEA into a favorable environmental assessment (not a guarantee) before any of the above starts to matter. Based on the content of the draft itself and associated appendixes, SpaceX appears to have a decent shot at receiving a “finding of no significant impact (FONSI)” or “mitigated FONSI” determination. However, SpaceX began the process of creating that draft as far back as mid-2020, followed by an FAA announcement in November 2020. The implication is that the FAA managed to drag out a draft release process that some have estimated should have taken 3-4 months into an arduous 10-15 month ordeal.
Combined with the uphill battle it’s starting to look like SpaceX will have to wage for an orbital Starship launch license in South Texas, it’s looking increasingly likely that Starship, Super Heavy, and Starbase will be technically ready for orbital launch tests well before the FAA is ready to approve or license them. Barring delays, the public now has until mid-October to read and comment on SpaceX’s draft PEA, after which the FAA and SpaceX will review those comments and hopefully turn the draft into a completed review. Even if the FAA were to somehow take just two months to return a best-case FONSI, clearing Starbase of environmental launch hurdles, it’s hard to imagine that the agency could then turn around and approve an orbital Starship launch license – or even a one-off experimental permit – in the last few weeks of 2021.
Ultimately, that means that nothing short of a minor miracle is likely to prevent the FAA’s environmental review and licensing delays from directly delaying Starship’s orbital launch debut. There is at least a chance that Starship, Super Heavy, and Starbase’s orbital launch site wont be ready for orbital launches by the end of the year, but it’s increasingly difficult to imagine that all three won’t be proof tested, qualified, and ready for action just a month or two from now. For the time being, we’ll just have to wait and see where the cards fall.
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SpaceX readies Starship Flight 14 for a historic journey into uncharted territory
SpaceX finished Starship’s Flight 14 rehearsal, clearing the way for its first orbital flight Monday.
SpaceX has cleared one of the last hurdles before Starship’s first trip to orbit. The company posted on X Thursday afternoon that its launch rehearsal for Flight 14 was complete, keeping the mission on track for Monday, September 28. The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT at Starbase, Texas, and runs for 75 minutes.
A wet dress rehearsal is essentially launch day without the launch. Crews fill Booster 21 and Ship 41 with thousands of tons of extremely cold propellant, run the countdown nearly to ignition, then drain everything back out. It lets engineers catch leaks or equipment problems before anything leaves the pad. SpaceX still needs a launch license from the FAA before the stack, which stands 407 feet tall, can fly.
Flight 14 matters because of where it is going. All 13 previous Starship flights followed a suborbital path, which works like throwing a ball extremely high and far: the vehicle reaches space, but it is always on a course that brings it back down within about an hour. This time, Ship 41 will perform a short engine firing called an orbital insertion burn roughly 25 minutes after liftoff, giving it enough speed to keep falling around Earth instead of back into it. SpaceX plans about six laps at an altitude near 275 kilometers (171 miles) over nearly 10 hours, as Teslarati detailed when the mission was first announced.
Launch rehearsal complete ahead of Starship Flight 14 pic.twitter.com/h5LBYyBqi4
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 24, 2026
Getting into orbit also means Starship has to prove it can get back out. The ship must relight a single Raptor engine in space to slow down for reentry. SpaceX says it will only attempt the orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm the hardware needed for that return burn has enough backup, and its flight plan includes health checks that could shorten the mission to two or five orbits.
Flight 14 is also the first to put working satellites into service. Flight 13 carried 20 Starlink V3 satellites in July, but they came back down with the ship because that mission never reached orbit. This time, 26 V3 satellites are meant to stay up and join the constellation within a few weeks. Together they add about 26 terabits per second of network capacity, which SpaceX says is roughly 10 times what a single Falcon 9 launch of older V2 Mini satellites adds. Three of them carry cameras that will photograph Starship’s heat shield in orbit to check for tile damage before reentry.
The hardware has changed too. Ship 41 flies with extra fasteners on tiles in the most vulnerable areas, fixes for gaps where superheated plasma slipped behind tiles, and curved tiles designed to reduce heating between them. Two tiles recovered from Ship 40 will fly again, the first reuse of any part of a Starship heat shield. Booster 21 carries better engine filtering and new relight software after ice clogged three center engines on the previous booster, leaving only eight of 13 engines to restart for its landing burn.
Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a new recovery zone after several Indian Ocean landings, while Booster 21 aims for the Gulf. Neither will be caught by the tower on this flight. Elon Musk said in August that a ship catch was likely “in a few months.”
Elon Musk
Google just picked SpaceX for its first step into orbital AI
Google will launch its first Project Suncatcher AI satellite on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare next week.
Google is about to put its own AI chips into orbit for the first time, and it is paying SpaceX to get them there.
The company said Thursday that the first in-orbit test of Project Suncatcher, its research effort to find out whether space can host large-scale AI computing, will fly next week on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission.
The satellite, called MVP, is about the size of a refrigerator and carries four of Google’s Tensor Processing Units, the same chips Google runs in its ground data centers. Google originally planned to launch two custom satellites in 2027, but chose to move faster by integrating its chips into a satellite.
MVP’s solar panels supply about one kilowatt of power, and Google will run Gemini models on the TPUs only in bursts of roughly 15 minutes before the chips shut down so the radiators can shed heat. In a blog post, Google said its Trillium TPUs survived vibration testing that mimicked sustained launch loads of up to 10g, with individual components seeing 50 to 100g, and handled a radiation dose greater than a five year mission would deliver.
SpaceX and Google mull massive partnership on Musk’s orbital data dream: report
Next week’s flight, slated for October 1, follows a relationship that became public in May, when Teslarati reported that Google was in talks with SpaceX for a launch deal tied to orbital data centers. Google also holds a stake of roughly 6% in SpaceX.
The two companies are chasing the same idea from very different starting points. SpaceX’s own orbital compute program is built around the AI1 satellite, a roughly 70 meter structure derived from Starlink V3 hardware that is designed for 150 kW of peak compute, about 150 times the power MVP will draw. Elon Musk has brushed off concerns about crowding orbit with those satellites, and SpaceX is building its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, to produce them, targeting an annualized rate of about 1 GW of space compute by the end of 2027.
Musk also posted on X on Thursday that “the amount of compute in space will obviously round up to 100% of all compute.”
Google has been more cautious in public. Its research estimates that launch prices need to fall below about $200 per kilogram before an orbital data center can compete with a ground facility on energy cost, a threshold the company believes could be reached around the mid 2030s. The Suncatcher team has said it expects the effort to remain a project rather than a product for years, which leaves the first real test of its hardware riding on a rocket from the company with the most aggressive timeline in the field.
Tesla has taken another concrete step toward owning its battery supply chain, and it’s doing so with what is perhaps the most important vehicle in its short-but-storied history.
On September 23, Tesla announced that it has officially built the first Cybercab with cathode material produced in-house at the company’s first cathode plant in the U.S., and the first in the U.S. overall.
First Cybercab made using our in-house cathode material – from the first cathode plant in the Americas pic.twitter.com/X95aVXsT9H
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) September 23, 2026
Active cathode material is the most expensive piece of a lithium-ion battery cell, and it often accounts for more than a third of cell cost. For years, the industry sourced a majority of it from Asia, but Tesla’s decision to make it in the United States bodes well for the Cybercab project. This is the latest chapter in Tesla’s vertical integration strategy, which began in public at Battery Day in 2020.
At the Battery Day Event, Elon Musk said the company would build a North American cathode plant and overhaul the process to cut costs and waste, while also making some of the most powerful and long-lasting cells in the industry.
The Austin facility took years to appear. Tesla filed permits for “Project Cathode” in 2022 on land near Giga Texas. By mid-2022, the building frame was up and Tesla later invested hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a larger expansion of the Giga Texas plant. The company stated it was operating the first large-scale cathode production facility in North America to supplement 4680 cell production.
One month later, that material reached a finished Cybercab.
Made with nickel cathode manufactured locally at Gigafactory Texas! https://t.co/DqMm5fZV3n
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2026
The timing of this breakthrough is monumental for the Cybercab program. As Tesla officially launched the first Cybercab rides to the public earlier this month, production of the ride-hailing-geared vehicle is moving forward on the planned S-curve that CEO Elon Musk told everyone to expect.
Nevertheless, packs of Cybercab units have been spotted throughout the United States, in an effort to potentially activate the fleet as soon as the company gains regulatory approval in various geographic areas.
On top of that, Tesla owning the cathode step and pairing it with its own in-house lithium from the Gulf Coast refinery shortens the supply chain that once stretched thousands of miles and subjects every pack to fewer external price shocks and geopolitical risks.
Tesla is not yet independent of all of its foreign suppliers, as some precursor metals come from mines and chemical plants. But the first in-house cathode Cybercab shows the company is closing the most expensive and most concentrated gap in its battery production efforts. For a vehicle like Cybercab to operate at a high utilization within the Robotaxi network, that control over cost is so crucial.
It is arguably as important as the software that drives it.
SpaceX readies Starship Flight 14 for a historic journey into uncharted territory
Google just picked SpaceX for its first step into orbital AI
